Our Time In Soda City (2016):

I am notoriously bad at keeping up with my blog. I admit it, I accept it, I wont apologize for it because life happens. I wanted to make up for some of our time in Cola that I have missed blogging about in a short update of sorts. So here is 2016, which I somehow missed a lot of even though I was blogging semi-regularly.

We came here ready to make the most of Columbia, but not with high expectations... and if I am being honest... a little let down because we were expecting to be going on a great German adventure instead of exploring (in my case, more of) the south. If you can't already tell... it exceeded our expectations.

We hit the ground running, we were house hunting to buy our very first home within two days of arriving and found a short term lease in the mean time (SWAT team apartment anyone?). We started exploring the city pretty quickly! One of our first adventures was going to St. Pats in Five Points, we had oysters for the first time, saw the fountains dyed green, watched some live music and started forming some pretty rad friendships.

We added a pup to our family, two years later and Moose is still mad at us and Loki is the size of a small child. He is still just as cute though. Pro tip: if you meet Loki be prepared to play a LOT of fetch, like... all the fetch.

We bought our first home, that was pretty exciting. We love our neighborhood, we have great neighbors and it's super quiet and small. 

We had two aviation filled days, where I really started to fall in love aviation photography, McEntire Family Day and the Shaw AFB Air Show. I really love air planes, y'all. 

Next Hochi left for a trip to Korea, our first time being apart on separate continents, but when he came home his stories made me really excited to eventually go to Korea (all roads in the viper lead there at least once...it was bound to happen.)

When he came back we bought our beautiful bike, went to the state fair, Patriots Point (highly recommend) and even drove to Florida for a Raider's game (Hochi's favorite team). 

We hosted our first thanksgiving, like real adults. My family came out and we all ate some amazing food (that smoked turkey though!!)

Hochi had a pretty cool opportunity... to help with a flyover for the Carolina Panthers... which meant I got to go on the field to help with part of it too. He had to stand on top of the score board, I do NOT envy him on that. 

We finished out the year with a trip to visit his family for Christmas, but not before he took me to a Christmas Tree farm to cut down a Christmas tree for the first time. (mine, not his). It was probably my favorite Christmas tree ever. 

 Thanks for checking out 2016! It's been fun to relive all of this again, especially as we are getting ready to leave by the end of the year. Keep an eye out for 2017 and 2018!
Fly Safe, Barb.


p.s. Notice how my mouth is closed in all of these pictures? That's because this was the year I got braces!